Category: Nightmares

by Bec Fary

last night a restless one with sleep beyond me, a struggle to close my eyes for I don’t know how long. until I did drift off, falling into the most terrifying paralysis. I can’t remember what my dream-visions where but there was something crawling over my skin, my whole body. I knew I was lying in bed, but I was somewhere else at the same time. I couldn’t move, and couldn’t wake up, but I didn’t have any control over the dream scenario. after wanting desperately to sleep, my mind was screaming for the opposite. stuck in purgatory between sleep and wake, no escape until finally I teared my consciousness away from dream-sensations over my skin, heart beating and wide awake again.

by Bec Fary

Instead of participating in this dream, it all played out from afar, like maybe I was watching everything in a film or something:

At some kind of meeting or assembly the populous were complaining about poverty. But the leader was indignant, and said: ‘But what about these diamonds?’

I had a view of a large, shiny diamond that someone help up to cover their eye, and maybe from what the leader had said, I knew everyone had at least one of these diamonds and they were very valuable.

But then my vision went strange, and it was like I was watching several scenes play out at once. I knew these diamonds were special and valuable, but they suddenly turned very dark as I was given visions of birds.

I don’t remember this part of the dream so well but I know it was very scary. It was like each diamond was an egg that hatched into a crow or raven and they all turned against the populous. I saw mutated faces, darkness and fear as the birds turned wild, violent and pecking in fury.

by Bec Fary

‘Woke to the alarm, felt like I hadn’t slept at all. Two messages were waiting for me:

“TORNADO DREAM!” from X, who very creatively dressed as a tornado at my dream-themed birthday party.

And another message, this one from Y: “Down in the basement where because of fear one has to charge and yell to make it the game player comes upon an outstretched bridge that spans the forearm of a friend and then looking around sees the other contestants and faces from the schoolyard lounging and loafing inside the four walls that are adorned by landscapes composed by your sister, the frames of which have been picked at and rolled to smoke in ceremony that I believe will happen soon is happening has happened within this room below the retail giants and forest tracks where brother came upon a toy lion in amongst the suits n ties ‘I’ve found him!’ joyous he exclaims and I want to buy the lion for brother and a birthday of old but he politely declines, cinema exits the darkness and red drapes murmered shuffling onto the streets where hide n seek begins with a discounted meal and drinks in between, none of which I can recall the consumption of.”

I replied to Y: “Dream or nightmare? On waking with a heaviness of heart sheets have been squeezed too thin, gripped in terror til the break of day, alarm bells ringing me out of a reality I can’t recall.” ‘

by Bec Fary

A dream this morning, a microdream. In just one second of sleep I had a story driven to me. I saw segmented body parts, hips and limbs of mannequins with no hands or feet. It was in a dark, narrow room, maybe a hallway, with a door or window open at the end and a weak shaft of grey light revealing the disjointed shapes. Slowly I came to know the body parts were mine.

by Bec Fary

From my notebook, recorded by a friend:

‘I have been and always will be fascinated by those who are capable of retaining dreams. I find it extremely rare that a dream of mine will re-occur or sustain in my memory for more than 15 minutes. The only fragment I can remember is a dream/beautiful nightmare: I was being chased by Mr. Smith out of The Matrix when suddenly I discovered my ability to fly. I have always wanted to have some kind of super human power and in that moment of discovery, the dream completely changed. To that point the environment had been dark and dreary and I had been stricken with fear the entire time. But from a dark and dreary world, and into one of fascination and wonder.’

by Bec Fary

“Right and left there are other things happening just as bad – crazy, horrible things too goofy and outlandish to cry about and too much true to laugh about – but the fog is getting thick enough I don’t have to watch. And somebody’s tugging at my arm. I know already what will happen: somebody’ll drag me out of the fog and we’ll be back on the ward and there won’t be a sign of what went on tonight and if I was fool enough to try and tell anybody about it they’d say, Idiot, you just had a nightmare; things as crazy as a big machine room down in the bowels of a dam where people get cut up by robot workers don’t exist.

But if they don’t exist, how can a man see them?

It’s Mr. Turkle that pulls me out of the fog by the arm, shaking me and grinning. He says, ‘You’re havin’ a bad dream, Mistuh Bromden.’ ”